Your Money Or Your Life: The Psychology Of Money
Imagine that you are walking along a narrow alley late at night, suddenly a man with a gun appeared. ”Your money or your life?” A normal response will be to take the money but spare my life. Ultimately when push comes to shove, we generally value our lives more than money. Reflecting on our past decisions and actions, there are instances where we choose money over life.
Let me share a bit of my background so that you will get a better context of what I am writing. I am of Chinese origin and in general the Chinese place a lot of emphasis on money. There are many traditional beliefs and practices associated with money. During Chinese New Year, we greeted each other with the phrase “Gong Xi Fai Cai” and this is wrongly translated by non-Chinese as “Happy New Year”. But the actual meaning of the phrase is “Hope You Get Rich”. This underlines the importance that the Chinese attached to money.
I am living in Malaysia where my ancestors arrived here with literally only a shirt on their backs. They had to start afresh with little resources in a land that was strange to them. From young, I had been taught this about money. “Make all the money you can, and can all the money you make”. That is why I had led a rather frugal lifestyle. Saving money was critical to building a better and brighter future.
So what is money exactly? Money is just a medium of exchange that we can be used to buy goods and services. With the abolition of the Gold Standard, money now is no longer backed by gold. If that is now the case, what then gives value to money (some called this fiat currency)? Money has value simply because the Government has decreed it to be legal tender and its citizens trust that they will be able to exchange money for goods and services.
The second question is should we spend our whole lives chasing after money? As humans, our effort and our time are our most precious assets. When we work for others, we are trading our efforts and time for money paid in the form of wages. Are we then working so hard and leading a frugal lifestyle just to have more of these paper of numbers and faces stored in the bank? We want something more than just pieces of paper.
We all need a minimum amount of money to enjoy a certain standard of living. To lead a more comfortable life, more money is required. In essence, we want money not purely for itself but for what we can achieve through the possession of money. We want to be able to lead decent lives, travel to foreign places, try new food and experiences. We also want to be sure that in the event that we fall sick or suffered a financial setback, we have enough savings to tide us through.
Many of us desired financial independence, being able to maintain one’s lifestyle even when one is no longer working. How nice it would be if we can do what we want, when we want, and with whom we want without worrying about money. Many people in this world are seduced by materialism where they think that all the problems in the world can be solved by money. They wrongly believed that more money means more happiness and fulfillment.
It is this desire to have more money that makes value money more than our lives. During our youth, we work long hours and sacrifice our health in the pursuit of money. Once we have the money, as we get older, we then trade this money for medical treatments to restore our health.
We tend to treasure money over the people around us. We end up using people to make money rather than to use money for people. At the same time, we use money to accumulate physical possessions rather than to use money on people around us.
Conclusion
There has been an ongoing debate on how much money is enough. For me personally and having experience poverty while I was growing up, money is an important part of our lives and we need to learn to manage it prudently. A certain amount of money is required for us to lead relatively comfortable lives. At the same time, I am also a great believer in moderation and balance. In today’s materialistic world where “even more money is not sufficient,” I need to be mindful of the priority that I placed on money and make sure that it is not above my health, my family and my ethics.
For us Christians, a certain level of wealth is required for us to maintain a standard of living. Money is required if we want to build churches for example. We should not be too caught up in the materialistic world. We need to be mindful our most precious treasures are stored in heaven.
So what is your opinion on money? Do share your comments and experiences.
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